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Newark, NJ

Newark

Rising From the Ashes

Founded in 1666, Newark was long the shipping gateway to New York and the rest of the United States. For two hundred years, Broad Street was one of the busiest commercial centers in the country. In the 1950s and 1960s, however, the city went into economic decline as manufacturing moved elsewhere and I-78, I-280, and the New Jersey Turnpike tore through neighborhoods.

The fortunes of Newark reached a low ebb in 1967, when a confrontation between a policeman and a black cab driver sparked ten days of rioting that resulted in 26 deaths and tens of millions of dollars in property damage. The middle-class exodus that followed left Newark without a residential financial base; the city population shrank (from a 1950 high of 438,000 to 270,000 today), businesses kept their distance, and Newark ’s once flourishing immigrant neighborhoods turned into slums. By 1980, the city had a poverty rate of about 30 percent, the second highest in the country.

But in the 1980s Newark started a slow, steady return. Fifteen minutes by train from New York, the city offers office space costing one-third as much. Affordability attracted companies including telecommunications provider IDT, the credit card issuer MBNA, Verizon, and Mutual Benefit Life.

Since 1990, Newark has clearly been a city on the mend. The $1.4 billion redevelopment of Newark International Airport brought jobs and commerce to the city. Prudential Financial (a founding member of Living Cities) has its headquarters in Newark and has been heavily involved in redevelopment projects. Since 1994, it has contributed $40 million in grants and $47 million in low-interest loans to city groups. Now, Newark takes particular pride in its world-class New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The $180 million center was opened in 1997. Since then, more than 3 million have attended performances there.

As developers flock to Newark, CDCs have been working to make sure that the city’s economic growth reaches lower income neighborhoods. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has been working with CDCs to move toward a more systematic housing development process, geared towards moderate and low income residents. The New Century Housing Production Program, launched recently, aims to build 1,000 housing units in the next few years.